Waiting To Live Or Waiting To Die Is The Same Wait - Grasshopper

What are we waiting for? The answer seems to be something in the future. Yet both waiting and the future are mental constructs. Neither actually exists right now.

If you spend your now waiting, you are spending life's moments in your head because you don't have to wait for now. Now is always here.

 

"When _________ is in place, then I can live" is playing the waiting game. "When my daughter finds a good man, then I can die a happy death" is another version of the popular game. Yes, you may win tons of money in Monopoly but if you think it's real, it will be an eternal wait before you can buy real, real estate with it.

 

If you treat waiting as real, you're setting yourself up for a raw deal.

 

Waiting is like trying; it doesn't exist. Ask Yoda if you don't believe me.

 

"But I do lots of waiting," you say. That's no different than saying, "I do lots of hallucinating." Both only exist in the small space of your mind, not in the large expanse of the world we live in.

 

Waiting is not a physical action; it's mental gymnastics.

 

We treat waiting as if it were a thing. It's not and never will be. It will always be a way of avoiding what's going on now: a mental escape mechanism.

 

There is an old song whose lyrics are, "I'm so tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you." What is the singer really tired of? They're tired of spending time in their head and taking no action.

 

You can wait a lifetime for something to happen. Odds are it will never happen with a waiting strategy.

 

I'm reminded of a phrase my sainted mother used to say: "Don't wait with your hand on your ass."

 

How to turn waiting into action: Notice that you are in your head "waiting." Then turn that think time into some form of action. Action dispels waiting and actually delivers something on the back end instead of another wanting, mental experience accompanied by knee bobbing or drum rolling of your fingers.

 

Patience is a virtue not to be confused with waiting. Patience is like giving film the time it needs to develop. Waiting is attempting to develop the film without the action of putting it into any solution.

 

Start noticing how much time you spend waiting. Noticing is an action that interrupts waiting, and taking an action is the only way to develop a real future.

 

All the best,

John